


The One with a Cat

by Pouler (poulerslashes)



Series: Drabbles and Shorts [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Future Fic, M/M, Old Married Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 23:21:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3152105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poulerslashes/pseuds/Pouler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a cat on Kageyama’s patio and he is not pleased about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One with a Cat

The cat showed up on a Tuesday.

Kageyama stepped out on the patio to drink his morning coffee, and the cat was there, sitting underneath the raised wooden planter box that held their little garden. It was pretty small, not a kitten but not full grown. It was mottled black and white, with one white paw and three black ones.

Kageyama appraised it carefully for a moment and the cat looked back at him. He silently stepped back inside their tiny kitchen.

"Hey," he said.

"What?" Hinata mumbled from where he blinked blearily in front of the coffee maker.

"There’s a cat outside."

Hinata gave him a slow, vague look. “Yeah, that’s the cat.”

“ _The_  cat,” Kageyama said, his irritation spiking at the specific article of choice. “Since when is there  _a_  cat,let alone  _the_ cat?”

"I dunno," Hinata yawned as he poured coffee into a mug. "A few days, I guess? I’ve been feeding it." He added four sugars.

"You’ve been –!" Kageyama counted to ten, like Sugawara had coached him. "You’ve been feeding a stray cat," he managed more evenly.

"I dunno if it’s a stray. It goes off a lot," was Hinata’s only explanation.

The first wave of Kageyama’s ire crested. “What are you feeding it, you dummy?”

Hinata was waking up more, and he gave Kageyama his first real irritable look of the morning. He picked up a clear plastic container off the counter and shook it pointedly. It was full of brown pellets. It rattled loudly. “Who’s the dummy? How did you not see this?”

Kageyama bristled and felt his cheeks heat a little. “I thought that was cereal.”  
  
"Cereal!" Hinata laughed, a musical sound that twinged somewhere behind Kageyama’s sternum. "That’s some pretty gross cereal! You didn’t try to eat any, did you?"

"Of course not!" he snapped in return.

Hinata stepped over to him with his coffee in one hand and the cat food in the other. “You’re still pretty dumb sometimes,” he said.

Kageyama huffed angrilly and bent at his knees to kiss him. “Stop feeding strays,” he said when he straightened again.

"That’s too cold. What a jerk!" Hinata went out to the patio with the cat food.

A week went by, and the cat was still there every morning. Kageyama had gotten used to staring it down from his little bistro table where he drank his coffee. He realized that it was probably hard to look menacing when drinking out of a mug with Anpanman on it, but he put his all into it. The cat, for its part, sneaked imperceptibly closer each day, little by little to the table.

One day, it stopped at his feet. It was a handsome little thing, with green mottled eyes and tiny tufts of hair at the tips of its black ears. It sniffed him carefully. Kageyama glanced over his shoulder at the door to the kitchen. Hinata was not in sight. He turned back to the cat.

"Hello, cat," he said carefully. The cat put a paw against his lower left leg. Kageyama tensed and held his breath.

The cat stretched dramatically and clawed him right through his pants.

Later he hissed at Hinata, “ _We’re_   _getting rid of it._ ”

"If you act like that," Hinata said helpfully, "it’s never gonna like you."

Three days later Kageyama went out to the patio, and the cat was sitting on his table cleaning itself quite contently. He simmered silently and stalked toward it. The cat’s reaction was instantaneous – it arched its back, fur bristling, and hissed fiercely – so loud it seemed that it must have come from a much larger creature.

Kageyama took to drinking his coffee on the other side of the patio.

He and the cat maintained their stand-off for a number of weeks. Only once did he break the peace – when he came home from work and found it inside the apartment, curled up with a sleeping Hinata on the couch.

"You can take my table, but this is  _too far_!” he bellowed at it. It jumped in alarm and ping-ponged around the living room as he tried to grab at it futilely. It broke a vase and knocked over a handful of pictures, then tore out through the open window in the kitchen.

Kageyama slammed the window shut after it.

"Hey, stupid," Hinata said.  
  
"It’s not my cat," Kageyama seethed.

"Hey,  _stupid_ ,” Hinata said again, and Kageyama turned toward him. Hinata lifted his arm invitingly. Kageyama wavered for a moment on the spot before joining him on the couch. He tucked in under Hinata’s arm. Hinata was soft and warm, and he smelled like sleep and home.

Kageyama turned his face into Hinata’s chest and felt some of the displeasure dissipate. “I don’t know why you like it so much.”  
  
"People say that about you too, you know," Hinata mumbled against his hair, and he reached for the TV remote.

~

The cat disappeared on a Wednesday.

Kageyama went out to the patio with his coffee like usual, and his table was empty. He frowned at that. He looked all around the patio but had no luck. He drank his coffee more slowly than usual and waited out there so long that he almost made himself late for work.

The cat was gone the next morning, and the next. “Strays are like that,” Hinata reassured him. “Your cat will be back.”

"It’s  _not_  my cat,” he reiterated for what felt like the hundredth time. He took to shaking the cat food container on the patio, though he would never admit it to anyone else.

On the fifth morning he left the cat food inside. He stood next to the bistro table for a few minutes before sighing and sitting down. That night he grabbed the container off the counter and went to throw it in the trash.

"Hey!" Hinata jumped up from the kitchen table and grabbed his arm. "Don’t do that!"

"What’s the point of it anymore?" Kageyama sneered. "It’s not doing us any good. That damn cat isn’t coming back."

Hinata shook his head. “Come on, you don’t know that,” he said encouragingly. “It could still show up tomorrow.”  
  
"No," Kageyama said. "It’s probably dead somewhere." He looked at the container in his hand and felt the certainty swallow him up like a dark cloud. "It’s just gone. And we’ll never know what happened to it."

"Tobio," Hinata said severely, and Kageyama blinked at him in surprise. Hinata lifted upward onto his toes and hugged Kageyama tightly around the shoulders. After a moment, Kageyama hugged him back fiercely and buried his face into Hinata’s neck. He was surprised to find himself dangerously close to tears. "We’ll give it a few more days, yeah?" Hinata said. "Cats are like that sometimes. A few more days, okay?"

Kageyama nodded hard.

~

It was after midnight, and so was Wednesday again, when Kageyama sat up straight in bed. It was storming outside. In the moment he took to orient himself there was a quick flash of lightning followed by a near-immediate crack of thunder.

"Wuzzit?" Hinata mumbled muzzily beside him.

Kageyama wasn’t sure. Usually he slept harder than Hinata did – but this time… He heard it again, a faint noise over the din of the storm. His heart leapt up into his throat. He jumped out of their bed and dashed through the little apartment to the patio door. When he opened it, the cat came in.

It was a mess. Bedraggled and skinny, its speckled fur matted, its single white paw dark with mud. It mewled at him piteously and walked around and around against his legs.

Hinata had followed him into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes and yawning. “What is–” he said, cutting off when he saw the cat.

"Get a towel!" Kageyama demanded. "Get some warm milk! Get the food!"

Hinata was laughing. “I told you!” he said deliriously. “I told you!”

"You idiot!" Kageyama bellowed. He anxiously stepped from foot to foot while the cat cried and rubbed against his legs repeatedly. "Do something!"

"Pick it up, dummy!" Hinata laughed, "it wants you to pick it up!"

"But, I–"

"Tobio, just  _pick the damn thing up_!”

Stiff with indecision, Kageyama bent and carefully put his hands under the cat’s front legs. He awkwardly lifted it, and it went without a fight, though its legs stuck out straight from its body in an ungainly way. “What do I do with it?” he said apprehensively.

"Jeez, you stupid–," Hinata crossed over to him and took the cat. "Hold out your arms like you’d hold a baby.  _A baby,_ Kageyama. Not a melon!” The cat was still meowing pathetically.

"I didn’t have siblings, Shouyou!" Kageyama blurted.

"Here, that’s fine, I’ll get the towel now," Hinata said, and he settled the cat in Kageyama’s arms.

The cat stopped crying and looked at Kageyama with its green eyes. It blinked at him slowly and started kneading against his increasingly ruined t-shirt. A low rattling purr began to emanate from somewhere inside it, the sound larger than the cat itself.

Hinata came back with a towel. He stopped a few feet away.

"What?" Kageyama said. He tried for irritation, but the truth was he felt rather pleased.

"You look really cute right now," Hinata said. "I told you it was your cat."

Kageyama blushed. “It’s not!” he proclaimed, though it wouldn’t be the last time.


End file.
